It’s not unusual to see people miss flights, and/or to see them lose their patience with frontline airline employees. Here’s a unique twist on that, as a former senior airline executive has gone on a bit of a rant, after IndiGo left him behind during a rolling delay. Are his complaints warranted, or should he…
Continue reading: Airline Executive Slams IndiGo After Missing Flight Due To Rolling Delay
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The smart money is on Dave Stafford to break the ice with the first racist comment in this section.
This exact situation happened to me in Sao Paolo about 8 years ago. LATAM. I was in LATAM's own lounge. A rolling delay. After a while I decided to check the gate just because I had low confidence in LATAM's communication capabilities. Sure enough gate was closed. Even worse this was the second leg of a four leg ticket so I stood to lose my return to Europe. The gate agents acknowledged what had happened and also there happened to be a pilot and his fiance who wanted to catch the flight so they sent a minivan to pick us up and take us to the flight. It was still at a remote stand and the door closed immediately after the three of us boarded.
It turned out fine, but it pissed me off that the screen in the lounge could not be trusted.
This just in: man misses flight and has a whinge.
Any seasoned traveller knows that relying on departure screens alone is risky business, and that being at the gate 20 minutes prior to departure (especially as part of a brief delay) is even riskier. He gambled and lost. Hope the extra time in the lounge was worth it.
This is not a story.
I've seen flights get delayed several hours, only to shortly after be un-delayed and show an on-time departure. I wonder how much grace is given to passengers who exited the airport after seeing the initial delayed departure time
Departure screens should be a source of information travelers can rely on. We shouldn't just accept departure screens not showing correct information
Even India has an air passenger rights legislation that includes refunds or rebooking plus compensation up to ₹10,000 (about $110). Indian consumers are better protected than Americans. You'd think we'd do something about that... eventually... *cough*
"Should be."
And that's the intention. Humans also have brains. Use them. Talk about an addiction to screens.
Agree with others saying that the boards need to be accurate. One of my daughter's earliest memories is of me carrying her, aged nearly 2, running through Chennai airport after our delayed Indigo flight also didn't show as boarding, but we got a phone call from the gate agent saying they were just closing the doors. I grabbed her, slice of pizza still in hand, and we made a dash to the gate. She thought it was absolutely hilarious and laughed all the way to the plane. I was somewhat less calm about the situation!
I would have lost it if someone told me I was in Priority Pass lounge to "eat good food" 🙂
Seriously though, if he got a call at 3:05 (and presumably he was not at the gate) for 3:25 departure - he was pushing it.
This has happened to me twice in Singapore with Scoot & Singapore Airlines - who are absolutely obsessed with leaving early. They do not follow what’s printed or displayed, and they would then insist that there’s nothing they can do about it despite having a few extra minutes to spare from the actual gate closing time (and much more from the scheduled departure time). As much as everyone likes to tout the great service from Singapore Airlines, the ground staff and corporate staff are absolute dogshit.
It's a crappy situation, but one we hear every so often about airlines all around the world.
What's this guy going to do when it happens to a passenger at the next carrier he works for?
When he was an airline executive, how often did similar situation occur to pax flying his carrier?
In addition to boards needing to be accurate and notification systems needing to be timely (I've gotten announcements that it's my turn to board from e.g. DL after we're taxiing on multiple occasions - honestly, if an airline can't manage to make the the text/app notifications reliable, they just shouldn't send them), I'd add that if an airline announces a delay they need to be "pinned" to that delay to some extent. If, for example, I'm told that my 1 PM flight is now at 3 PM, it shouldn't be incumbent upon me to putter around the gate for several hours "just in case".
I'm totally with @Chris on this one. Of course the departure board should be as accurate as possible..but any traveller worth his salt knows - depending which airport/airline/country - that they're not to be relied upon 100% of the time. Increase your flight info sources: flight apps, airport departure apps, airline apps, text messaging etc etc.. But the best approach is get yourself off that lounge chair and down to your gate, so you have better situational awareness of what's happening with your flight. This has saved me from missing flights on more than one occasion over the years, most recently just a few weeks ago, because BOTH the departure board (BNE airport) was inaccurate, AND the airline app was not updating. I'm not feeling sorry for this airline exec, one bit.
This is what you get when you fly low cost airlines like Indigo. I always fly TRZ-SIN-MAA to ensure that I can avoid Indigo.
That statement makes no sense. So your will lengthen your route by 10 hours and cost by 3-4X to avoid indigo???
I missed an easyJet flight like that in Lyon:
- flight was delayed for 2 hours, so I headed to the lounge
- while the plane wasn't here, the status on the monitors was "boarding" - and it stayed like that forever
- what I didn't know is that in Lyon, they don't show a status "last call" on the monitors
- after a while, as the status was still "boarding" I went to enquire at the gate. The told me the flight is closed and that they called me multiple times (which I didn't hear being in the lounge)
Lesson learnt
Why do you seem so surprised that Indian travellers have it better than Americans? The US is a third world country with absolutely terrible quality of life.
Got an email from Hawaiian at breakfast saying that my 12 noon flight out of Honolulu was delayed until 4pm. "Sweet, I thought! I'll go to the Pearl Harbour museum!" Just wandered down to the submarine area at the bottom of the park and another email just after 11am saying the flight was leaving in 65 minutes time (5 minutes after the original time)! Panic!!
Sprinted back to the hire car, drove 100mph to the airport and made my flight by about 60 seconds!
Yeah, it's frustrating to deal with rolling delays, often tied to a maintenance issue in which there cannot be an exact time in which maintenance will resolve the problem. Therefore, all airlines post continual 15-20 minute delays until the gate agent gets the ok to board.
Because boarding time is uncertain it means hanging out at the gate as most lounges won't monitor delays, particularly a third party lounge.
Don't like it? Fly private.
GM, fun retort, but, you know that it's always been the haves-vs-have-nots; as always, the relatively well-off in the US live lives of relative luxury and excess, while our poor, like in India, have little social safety net, and also struggle immensely. Unfortunately for Americans, our middle class is being hallowed out by anti-worker, anti-consumer policies, and a plundering of public services. Things have certainly improved in India over the decades (beautiful new highways, metro, schools, hospitals, corporate offices, etc.), but there's a long way to go for many. We each still have significant corruption in our societies that needs to be dealt with.
No, the strawman of 'just fly private' is not an option for most. Silly, Georgie.
"maintenance issue"... which is under the airlines' control, meaning, they should compensate passengers for their failure (refund or rebooking, plus a few hundred of dollars, depending on the route, duration, etc., see EU261, APPR, even India's own policies up to $110 per passenger.)
This has happened to me before in airports that don't have very good IT. I've learned from it by making a point to check on these things and go to the gate when things seem fishy. In this case I absolutely would have left the lounge to go and check in with the gate much earlier on.
Departure screens are not reliably updated. Noone prevented him from disregarding the multiple overhead announcements. He "accepted" the screen info as correct and paid the price. Of course, he's welcome to not "accept" the info; just fly another full-service airline for domestic flights. Of course, in India, those have been all but killed by Indigo itself.
Gopalanbhai could also move to Switzerland--I'm guessing departure screens for domestic flights there are somewhat more reliable. After all, just compare a 3-month rolling average for Bern/Geneva/Zurich screens to Tiruchirappalli screens. I don't have the data at hand, but we can guess at which will come out ahead....SMH
Are you alleging that such legislation would compensate him .1 lakh Rs(In) for repeatedly and deliberating disregarding the ample updates??
He tells everyone he worked for an airline, then shoves a camera in the staff’s face and publishes it in social media. Whatever went wrong, it’s inappropriate especially when he was in the industry. You wouldn’t see management of European airlines doing this.
well indigo management and staff are equally irresponsible
i am vey glad that indian regulator DGCA slapped them with hefty
fine of rs. 22.00 crores for their non compliance with the FTDL
flight time duty limitation regulations.
This isn’t nearly as annoying as being informed about 2 hours delay, then showing up at airport just to find the check in is closed. Yes. It is outstation. Yes they’re contract worker. I mean the same check in contract worker also have to work the gate but they closed check in early? But why tell me there’s delay in advance if i still have to show up at the airport on time? What the actual freak…
Flight details on monitors are notoriously problematic. He could have asked the lounge personell to check with the gate if in doubt.
I seldom trust the displays. It seems as if many of the status changes are not triggered automatically, but (my guess) by the gate crew. At least that is my only explanation for flights jumping immediately to "last call".
So I try to make an informed guess as to whether the plane is physically there before heading to the gate. Even then, I did end up waiting an hour or so at the gate for some random whatever hiccup (screens showing "last call" or "go to gate" for like 1.5 hours straight).
Once had the pleasure of standing around a gate in Zurich after boarding was called via the screens, only to discover that neither ground crew nor plane were present. In fact, said plane hadnt even left Paris, and the ground handling agents arriving at some point close to the original departure time just "didnt know" when or if the flight would operate (or acknowledge the rather large delay at all).
Lounge attendants usually are less than helpful, with maybe the exception at hub airports of certain airlines (LH Grp, DL, KL seem to be somewhat competent usually - while AF is "oh i dunno i work the lounge")
TL;DR: I use my own judgement in a cautious way and usually dont end up missing flights.
So you would rather delay 90-450+ actual passengers, and countless hundreds or thousands of passengers on later flights on the same plane, so that you can dawdle for a "few extra minutes"? Ever heard of the greater good?? SMH
90% of Indians/desis, not all NRIs and not all CEOs/MDs, give the other 5% of us a bad name...